After the thousands of dead-on jokes he has delivered through 50 years, the strongest legacy of
Woody Allen as a filmmaker might involve the gallery of complicated female characters he has
created.

The latest and one of the most absorbing is found in Jasmine, a former woman of privilege
brought low by betrayal and struggling to remake her shattered life with the aid of a little luck
and a lot of alcohol.

Played to crumbling perfection by Cate Blanchett, the focus of the Allen comedy-drama
Blue Jasmine arrives in San Francisco to move in with her sister, Ginger (Sally Hawkins),
after the collapse of her old high life in New York.

Jasmine is soon sharing a cramped space with Ginger and her blue-collar boyfriend, Chili (Bobby
Cannavale) — an obvious echo of the setup of
A Streetcar Named Desire.

A curious element is that Jasmine and Ginger were both adopted, without any biological parents
in common.

If not otherwise desperate, Jasmine might pay little mind to Ginger and the low-class world that
repulses her.

Shuffled with the San Francisco scenes are flashbacks to the previous life that Jasmine shared
with husband Hal (Alec Baldwin), a financier who doted on his wife even while cheating on her and
his investors.

Jasmine is trying to carry on before breaking down.

She lands a job as a dentist’s receptionist, then takes computer classes with a vague notion of
a career in interior design. She meets a suave diplomat (Peter Sarsgaard), but she doesn’t resist
condemning Chili, helping to drive Ginger into an affair.

As with many other Allen scripts, scattered subplots suggest random ideas tapped to expand the
film to feature-length — but with the spotlight always turned back on the hypnotizing Blanchett
performance.

Jasmine is easily disliked as a dilettante who got some of what she deserved, but Blanchett
rallies audience sympathy for someone drowning in circumstances she barely understands.

Blue Jasmine has more working-class types than does the usual Allen script, but, for a
change, they are more grounded than the elites whom Jasmine still aspires to join. For added
flavor, Andrew Dice Clay pops in and out as Ginger’s ex-husband, while Louis C.K. relies on his
edgy tone as Ginger’s new lover.

In many of his best films, Allen has dug through his comedy to find the pain of
relationships.

This time, while the pain remains front and center, the abundant comedy bubbles up through the
agony of Jasmine for an indelible portrait of a fragile woman in free fall.